The Cowon A3 isn’t the slimmest or lightest portable video player we’ve seen, considering that it weighs in at 0.6 pounds and measures 5.2×0.9×3.1 inches. Fortunately, it’s got it where it counts–the screen. The A3’s 4-inch, 800×480 LCD is sharp and gorgeous. The tradeoff, of course, is that the Cowon A3’s glossy plastic screen is a magnet for both fingerprints and scratches.
The COWON A3 also boasts the industry¿s most expansive digital media format and codec support, including popular lossy and lossless audio codecs True Audio, Monkey¿s Audio, Musepack, WavPack, Matroska, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis; and video codecs DivX, XviD, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, WMV, H.264 MP and M-JPEG. Additionally, the A3 comes equipped with an FM radio and recorder, voice recorder with internal microphone, built-in stereo speakers, and it functions as a full-screen photo and document viewer. With its high-speed USB 2.0 interface and USB host functionality, the COWON A3 also doubles as a data storage and high-capacity photo backup device for digital cameras with support for JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIF, BMP and RAW image formats.
As an audio player the Cowon A3 has plenty going for it, including support for MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC/AAC+, AC3, True Audio, Monkey’s Audio, MusePack, WavPack, G.726, and PCM audio formats. Noticeably absent from this list is the DRM-protected WMA format required for subscription music services. For better or worse, you probably won’t want to load up the Cowon A3 with a ton of music anyhow, seeing that it doesn’t allow you to sort music using common ID3 tags such as album, genre, or song. Instead, Cowon’s music browser uses a straightforward file-tree system that is completely up to you to organize. If you can live without the convenience of ID3 tag sorting, however, the A3 will reward you with the stellar audio quality and slew of advanced music enhancement features we’ve come to expect from Cowon. One of the more interesting audio features crammed into the Cowon A3 is the ability to record audio directly to either WMA (128 to192Kbps) or FLAC (lossless) files using the line-input connection. FM radio or voice recordings (using the built-in monophonic mic) are saved as 128-to-192Kbps WMA files.
Key Features:
FM tune
Voice recorder
Digital audio player
Digital photo viewer
Digital video player
Digital audio recorder
Video capture from external source